The Hidden Operational Costs of Travel Payments - powered by Sunrate

March 5, 202624:0161 views

Summary

This closing panel session at ITB Berlin 2026, moderated by Kevin White (VP Corporate Solutions, Mastercard), brought together three payments specialists — Paul Batchelor (Head of Sales Europe, Sunrate), Mary Cotugno (MD, Travelsoft Pay), and William Plummer (CEO, Repayd/formerly Trust My Travel) — to expose the hidden operational costs embedded in travel company payment flows. The session was powered by Sunrate.

The central thesis advanced by all three panelists is that travel companies consistently underestimate total payment costs by fixating on headline rates (acquiring percentage, virtual card rebates, wire transfer fees) while ignoring the aggregate of smaller leakages: failed payments, multiple retry attempts, rejected bank transfers, settlement delays, FX double-conversion, manual reconciliation overhead, and chargeback administration. Will Plummer cited a striking fraud cost multiplier: for every $1 of fraud, it costs a business $4 in total operational impact — meaning a low chargeback ratio can still represent a massive hidden expense.

Fragmentation emerged as the dominant theme. Mary Cotugno argued that travel companies typically treat payments as isolated, standalone functions — acquiring, virtual cards, payouts, FX — rather than as an orchestrated flow. This fragmentation creates FX double-conversion risk (conversion on the pay-in side and again on the pay-out side), reconciliation mismatches, and visibility gaps. She framed traditional banking rails as designed for 'linear commerce,' incompatible with travel's asynchronous reality: bookings made today, fulfillment weeks or months later, across multiple jurisdictions, currencies, and supplier types. Paul Batchelor reinforced this, noting that SWIFT and SEPA are not broken per se but were built for periodic, batch settlement — not multicurrency, cross-border, real-time travel flows.

On visibility, Will Plummer acknowledged that data on true per-booking payment cost is technically available but difficult to extract: it requires API connectivity, deep knowledge of interchange and scheme fee structures, and investment in analytics tooling — capabilities that only larger companies have typically built. He argued that businesses that map their full payments journey — from customer pay-in, through FX management, treasury, and supplier payout — and instrument every failure point will outperform those that treat payments as a back-office afterthought.

For supplier relationships, virtual cards were described as having dominated travel B2B payments for over two decades due to guaranteed payment, currency reach, and embedded data, but panelists agreed that supplier acceptance is not universal: some suppliers refuse virtual cards due to high acceptance costs, while others prefer them for low administrative burden. The emerging view is that payment method selection must be tailored by supplier vertical (aviation, hotels, tours & activities, cruise) and geography, with account-to-account and local real-time payment rails increasingly necessary for markets not well served by card networks.

Looking ahead 5 years, Paul Batchelor predicted AI-driven intelligent payment orchestration — dynamically routing payments based on liquidity needs, supplier preferences, FX optimization, and commercial context. The panelists collectively called on travel companies to stop treating payments as a procurement exercise and reposition them as a margin lever and competitive differentiator, arguing that 100% of travel company revenue flows through the payments layer.

Key Takeaways

•The total cost of payments is massively underestimated by travel companies: most focus on headline acquisition rates or virtual card rebates and miss the aggregated cost of failed payments, retry attempts, rejected bank transfers, delayed settlements, wiring fees, FX double-conversion, and manual reconciliation admin — all of which 'stack up absolutely huge' according to Will Plummer.
•Fraud carries a 4x cost multiplier: Will Plummer cited that for every $1 of fraud, it costs a travel business $4 in total operational cost — making even a small chargeback ratio a significant hidden expense that most companies underestimate.
•FX double-conversion is a specific, avoidable leakage point: Mary Cotugno identified that fragmented systems can trigger FX conversion twice — once on the pay-in side and again on the payout side — directly eroding margin that could be avoided through unified platform orchestration.
•100% of travel company revenue flows through the payments layer: Mary Cotugno's closing statement framed payments not as back-office plumbing but as a lever controlling the entirety of company revenue, arguing it deserves board-level commercial attention equivalent to marketing or distribution.
•Traditional banking rails are 'not fit for purpose' for modern travel: Will Plummer stated directly that traditional banking infrastructure is no longer adequate, with Paul Batchelor adding that SWIFT and SEPA were built for batch, periodic settlement — not for the asynchronous, multicurrency, multi-supplier reality of travel bookings.
•Virtual cards have dominated B2B travel payments for over two decades but cannot serve all markets or supplier types: panelists agreed that some suppliers reject virtual cards due to high acceptance costs, and expanding into new geographic markets requires account-to-account, real-time payment rails, and locally preferred methods.
•Best-in-class operations over the next 5 years will use AI-driven intelligent payment orchestration: Paul Batchelor predicted that AI will route each payment dynamically based on liquidity requirements, supplier preferences, FX rates, and commercial optimization — transforming payments from a fixed workflow into an adaptive system.

Transcript

All right. And now we have the stage being set to a panel session. And while they do that, um, I tell you a bit about what we're going to do now. So, in, uh, about 2 minutes, we're going to start. And this is the final session. And I'm happy about it, but also my heart is breaking because I really loved spending the time with you in the past two days and today. So, it's really sad to let you go then go, but is there a better way to end this track now? this morning like lunch lunchtime almost um ...